Good question. There's lots of reasons to do the Ultimate Kayak Trip. The first thing to do is look at the UKT as a lifestyle and not an expedition. Even though my goal is to complete the loop, I don't have a time frame for it; I just want to live the life of the sea kayaker. I have so many activities to do, and all on a different beautiful tropical beach every night. The UKT is the best big Kayak Trip in the World because it's so warm and you see so many countries, languages, volcanoes, ship wrecks, history, and varaity of kayaking conditions.

1) Travel - Traveling is great. You get to learn that how big the world is and how many different kinds of people there are and how many different way to be there are to choose from. It's amazing to imagine how a place will be and then being amazed with how much you guessed correctly and how many new qualities the place has that you never anticipated.

The best way to travel through these countries is by kayak. I can accomplish a lot more if I travel by kayak. If I travel the traditional way I would use up all my time, money and energy sitting and waiting for things, but if I kayak I'll excersize all day and will be free from the useless distractions that traditional travel has, like waiting in line.

2) Get into Shape The UKT is the best way to get into shape. All I will be doing is excersizing and sleeping. Kayaking is a good whole body work out because you have to use so many muscles. You have to hold a paddle up in front of you using your Lats and Triceps, then dig it into the water using your back and biceps. You have to propel the boat with your butt so every muscle in your core is always flexed and working. I will also paddle standing up which will diversify the muscles that I use even more as well as give my legs a work out.

The only muscles that won't be totally worked while I'm kayaking are my legs, but I have my own excersizes on the land for that. I will get up at the crack of dawn and stretch for a half hour and then do my excersizes on my excersize page for an hour or two with the goal of filming the breaking of the records of as many excersizes as I can, filming every new Personal Record so it can go on youtube. I will also get a lot of good excersise while I'm snorking around hunting for fish.

3) Educate Myself - The UKT is the best way to learn because audio is the best way to learn, and the UKT is the best way to listen to Audio. Audio is the best way to learn because you can study all day every day and keep doing what you normally do, instead of putting everything on hold while you sit on your ass and burn your eyes out on a book. If you sit on a couch and read a book all day, your body will begin to ache, and the reduced volume of blood passing through your body and brain will reduce your brain function and hinder your ability to retain what you are reading, however if you excersize while you listen, your heart constantly pumps fresh oxygenated blood to your brain to power your thoughts and retain the information. The UKT is the best method to learn this way because of it's physical strenuity mixed with the simplemindedness of sitting in a boat and paddling; keeping the distractions to an absolute minimum.

I have a great audio encyclopedia. It is 297 Gigabytes, has 22,067 files, 1,585 folders and covers pretty much everything, but specializes in history, with 211 Gigs dedicated to that. I have my entire collection layed out here condensed in a way that I can have a good understanding of what I have, so I can constantly listen to the subjects that are interesting to me at the time that I want to listen to them.

4) Make Youtube Videos I love making Youtube Videos, and the UKT is the very best lifestyle choice if that is your priority. My Youtube Channel Kylepounds has 2,336 videos and 155 Playlists and covers just about every subject. I love making videos because it's fun to get into a mental zone where I let all of my accumulated knowledge from different sources in a fascinating way that ties everything together into a conceptual framework that is unique to myself. I learn more every time I watch myself on camera, and it's always fascinating to notice what I forget and what I remember to say and how I say it. I always have something new to talk about. The only thing that keeps me from making more videos is that I am usually preocupied with something and can't take the time to just do it.

Time isn't going to be an issue while I'm on the UKT because I can make videos while I paddle. I have tripods that I can fix to the boat in front of me that can hold my camcorder so I can make videos while I paddle. It it's too windy that day I can do it while I'm lying in the hammock. Either way, I'll always have the time to make more videos.

I have all the talking videos that I have done organized in their playlists on my Video page that I can look at on my cell phone to get ideas about subjects to talk about. When I get an idea about a video to do I put it in it's appropriate playlist with a green background. I have a lot of video ideas accululated there now, and will continue to get more with each new video that I record. Recording videos gives me ideas about more videos to do because I see where I want to expand on certain concepts.

5) Entertain & Inspire Others - There's something magnetic about a story that you can see unfold every day in all it's detail, and you never know what will happen. I learned that last winter when my six year old channel went from 700-1100 subscribers in three months because I started doing daily vlogs, where all I did was talk about my boring life as a history researcher (the UTL maker). I know that if somebody had a detailed daily Vlog that I would definitely watch it because it would be interesting to see how their life ebbs and flows with their mood and the pattern of their activities and fequency of their various activities, etc... The key is to explain all the details of what you do from day to day so people feel like they are living your life with you.

I want a lot of other people to do this trip after me. People have the wrong attitude towards big trips like this. They think they are harder than they really are.

6) Being Alone I love being alone and the UKT is the best way to be alone. Over the last couple of years I have developed a taste for being alone and have learned that in the period that I am in my life right now I need to be alone all the time if I am going to be able to learn my audio encyclopedia, make videos and keep my body in good physical condition.

The UKT is the best way to life a simple life with no distractions where I can do all the things that I want to do. I can be all by myself and share it with the world at the same time. There's nothing I can think of that I would rather do for the next couple of years. The sky is the limit.

7) Be in Nature The UKT is the best way I can think of to be immersed in the elements of nature in a comfortable yet fascinating way, and it's a wonderful feeling being in touch with nature. Our bodies soak up the vitamins and minerals that the sun and water and and smells of plants and ozone and animals and everything else the natural world has to offer. We shouldn't forget that we come from the natural world and so being physically emmersed into it is healthy for our bodies.

It's also amazing to watch all the wildlife swimming below me and birds flying above me and all the animals scurrying around. I think after a few weeks of snorkling that I'll start to recognize the different kinds of fish and their behaviors and how to catch them, which should be fun.

8) Not Have to Work I predict the UKT will not be very expensive. I already bought all my gear, and I'll be far away from a store for the vast majority of the time, so the only thing I will need to spend money on is the $100 & 65$ per month Cell and Satelite bills and the simplest, cheapest food I can get. Plus, I will have the opportunity to fish with my pole and spear. I will send my memory cards to my mother to upload to youtube, so I my phone bills should be covered by the money I make from youtube from that. The UKT should be a much more interesting vlog than the living in the van was, and I was making $135/month from that when I was doing it.

* The possible extremily low cost of this trip is something to be considered by kayakers who have the gear and might otherwise think that money is an obstacle when it's really not. I am extremily interested in seeing how the finacial part of the trip pans out, because if it turns out to be very cheap there is no reason why this trip shouldn't be something that many more people will do in the years to come.

As I'm sure you have noticed by now we have a firm belief this trip can be done safely if we take all the necessary precautions. The most dangerous aspect to this trip will be our lack of experience, so we will prepare as well as we can while we are in Miami. Some of the safety precautions I can think of now are to have two extra paddles, be attached to the kayak at all times, have the satellite phone, three GPS's, maps and two compasses. If we have the time we would like to learn how to read the stars to know exactly what direction we need to be going.

Obviously the trip tactics will be different depending on where we will be kayaking, so I will divide it up into three different kinds of paddling days: 1) The long inter island crossings, 2) The shorter island hopping crossings, and 3) The skirting of giant islands and continents.

Long Inter island crossings - Our first inter island crossing will be our very first in our lives and a whopping 50 miles across deep ocean with 4 mph northward current. It will be very exciting but also very frightening, so we definitely want to do it right. We figured that if we travel four miles an hour it will take 12 hours to complete, and I guarantee we won't be wanting to do any hanging out during this crossing; we will be hammering the whole time out of sheer excitement. We will want to utilize as much daylight as possible on this trip so as to not freak ourselves out in the creepy murky depths of the vast ocean, and to see where the waves are coming from and see what we're doing. We will be brave enough to endure a couple hours of dark paddling though, so we will want to get up at around three and shove off at around four so as to give us plenty of daylight to get to Bimini. As far as diet goes we will have a big breakfast and stuff our life jackets and deck bags with power bars and energy gels, and tons of water. In the storage compartments we will store a few more days worth of food for good luck, but will count on only eating the food we won't have to get out of our seated positions to eat.

Shorter island hopping crossings - These crossings will just be a whole lot of fun. My strategy for these is to put on my earphones and paddle as hard as I can until I feel the need to eat, at which point I will take my sandwich out of my pocket and eat it as fast as I can before paddling as hard as I can again. If my legs get sore I will have a bite to eat on the hammock.

3) The skirting of giant islands and continents - These will consist of us just hammering from point to point. At each point we will consider grounding and walking around a little bit while we eat.

Sail - Sails kick ass so I think we'll take one. The best kind of sail for this trip would be like the one to the right. It looks easy to take down and put up, its light and small, and appears good for pulling our boat forward which will want to point forward anyway because of the pontoons in the back. Maybe in certain sections where the wind is going our way, we will even be able to just sit in the hammocks and let the sail do all the work.There are other kinds of sails that are bigger, but I reckon they will give us too much trouble to deal with, plus our space will be limited.